Harsh military lesson learnt in suicide city

THE DEATH of 13 Israeli soldiers in a booby-trapped building in Jenin was a military disaster that commanders have dreaded throughout their onslaught on Palestinian cities.

Few armies enjoy urban warfare. But Israel, as a small country with a conscript army, particularly detests the grind and casualties of house-to-house fighting in alien territory. It would rather fight in the desert.

Israel's military casualties during the Palestinian uprising are running much higher than its losses during the long war of attrition in southern Lebanon, where Hizbollah guerrillas forced it to retreat to the border two years ago. However, the experience of recent incursions into Palestinian cities and refugee camps seemed to show that its forces could cut through the resistance with relative ease.

Related Articles

For the past 10 days, these methods seemed to work. Israeli forces took control of Ramallah, Bethlehem, Tulkarem and Qalqiliya, rounding up more than 1,000 Palestinian suspects and seizing large quantities of arms. Even in Nablus, the city known as the "Mountain of Fire" because of its rebelliousness, many gunmen emerged with their hands up.

At the end of last week, the Israelis dropped hints that they were about to take control of Jenin and pull out quickly. Instead, the city that bred dozens of suicide bombers held out. Its fighters seemed ready to defend themselves to the death, setting booby traps and some strapping on explosives, ready to hurl themselves at the enemy as human bombs.

"Until today, the operation in strictly military terms has been hugely successful, but this will shock them a lot," said one Western defence analyst. "I don't think it will stop the Israelis going into cities again, but they'll do it with more firepower. That will mean more civilian casualties."

As they planned "Operation Defensive Wall", Israeli officers said they examined the experience of other armies in urban warfare - even the Germans during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, when Jewish fighters managed to hold off Nazi troops for a month.

That example should have warned them of the dangers of fighting a foe that does not expect to survive. Until yesterday, many Palestinians were presenting the conflict in Jenin - and reports of more than 100 killed by Israel - as a massacre of civilians. After the blow inflicted on Israeli forces, however, Jenin may go down in Palestinian history as a byword for heroic resistance.